Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin - n° 111

Summary

Since Deng Xiaoping, in the ’70s, gave top priority to economic development, China has made tremendous sacrifices. Having worked hard and cheap and polluting its country, it soon became the workshop of the world. But all those sacrifices were not in vain. Barely 15 years later for instance, in 1993, Shanghai was able to launch its first ultra-modern subway line. This example is not taken at random: the construction of metro lines is always a good indicator of both economic and administrative health of cities or countries…Read more in the GEAB 111

Crypto-currencies, of which Bitcoin is the most popular, are “virtual” currencies devoid of any physical reality, possessing an electronic form and functioning by using cryptographic methods. They are used specially as a means of payment in an innovative decentralised peer-to-peer system. With the Bitcoin and the other crypto-currencies, one can buy everything from food products, company shares, to false driving licenses and even Kalashnikovs. It all goes back to the subprime crisis in 2008/2009, when the monetary, financial, banking and stock market system broke out in a crisis that threatened to upset the world system as we have known it since 1945 and which our GEAB team has reported on since 2006…Read more in the GEAB 111

Every year, LEAP/E2020 is offering you a short overview of the up and down trends of the year which is starting. In addition to the intellectual interest of this contribution of LEAP/E2020, which of course reflects many of our researchers’ analyses over the past few months, it aims at providing a better perception of priorities within the news, at the same time conveying tracks of recommendations. This list can thus help very concretely the GEAB reader to get prepared for the year to come. With an eleven-year success rate ranging from 69% to 85%, this annual anticipation is a very concrete decision-making tool for the next twelve months… Read more in the GEAB 111

Every year, LEAP/E2020 is offering you a short overview of the up and down[1] trends of the year which is starting. In addition to the intellectual interest of this contribution of LEAP/E2020, which of course reflects many of our researchers’ analyses over the past few months, it aims at providing a better perception of priorities within the news, at the same time conveying tracks of recommendations. This list can thus help very concretely the GEAB reader to get prepared for the year to come. With an eleven-year success rate ranging from 69% to 85%, this annual anticipation is a very concrete decision-making tool for the next twelve months.

The following 35 Trends highlighted here after are related to the following ten Very Wide Trends for 2017:

. The consequences of the Very Big Western Defeat in the Middle East in 2016, which represents a gigantic “game-changer” of which we are not yet fully aware but which is already at work.

. The great change of political orientation of the United States, and in particular the policy of the “America first” which puts an end to 30 years of “America-world” and paves the way for “Europe first”, “China first”, “Russia first”, “India first”, “Africa first”, etc.; a tendency which, if not structured rapidly, implies big conflicts.

. The obvious consequence of this sudden direction shift on the instances of global governance as we knew them; with assumptions of direct derailment for some of them and necessary reforms for the others.

. For Europe particularly, the disappearance of any common project or vision, linked to the failure of the EU, mechanically bringing to the surface all the pathologies of the past (dreams of empires, ancestral hatreds, etc.).

. An identical risk for the world if a convincing and democratically legitimate global governance project does not emerge right away.

. The fluctuating lines between the multipolar world and the bipolar world in 2017, with risks of marginalisation of a Western “bloc” crossed by fracture lines, facing a “rest of the world” trying to organise on multipolar logics within the framework of the new model of governance proposed by China

. The great political chaos which Europe will present to the rest of the world with an ideological hardening, which will tarnish the brilliance of the beacon of humanist values ​​that was still diffused by Europe.

. The end of neoliberal apolitical one-track thinking and the return of the current affairs’ management by politicians at the only level where they exist: the national level.

. The risk of confinement, especially on the Europeans’ side, in a distorted representation of global reality under the blows of a technical and ideological failure of information systems.

. The directions given in the West by a totalitarian evolution nourished at the breast of the trans-humanist thought coming from Silicon Valley, which intends to cut out the human.

More than three years after the Ukraine-related Euro-Russian catastrophe, there is no hope of an end to this crisis. On the contrary, the tension inexorably keeps climbing: Donbass still at war, annexation of Crimea by Russia not recognised by the international community,… the eyes are now turning to the Baltic Sea where demonstrations of military testosterone is progressing well on both sides of the new iron curtain. Not far from Gdansk, the former Danzig, whose corridor contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War, another corridor is now the object of all desire and may become a trigger of nothing less than a Third World War: the corridor, or the triangle, of Suwalki…

We anticipated this in May: good news abounds in the eurozone, notably for the economic matters, with a “recovery” making Mr. Trump and Mrs. May jealous. This even encourages the ECB to consider reducing its quantitative easing programme earlier than expected, namely in January, before halting it in September 2018. Investments go up, unemployment declines, and surprisingly enough, so does the public debt…Read more in the GEAB 118 / Oct 2017

United Kingdom: Towards a May-xit“Since there is no future, the wanderings of the past are back in Europe”. On this topic, our team finds interesting to identify some sort of an echo of the Continental Blockade within the Brexit affair. There will be of course no strict parallel, but this parallel might show that Brexit is at least as much the result of a rejection of the UK by the continent as the other way around…Read more in the GEAB 118 / Oct 2017

Calendar of Future Events – October 2017/February 2018Three times a year, as part of its decision-making toolbox, the GEAB team prepares for you a factual map of the next four to six months. July 2017 – June 2018: Visegrad Group – Rotating Presidency : Hungary is holding the rotating presidency of the Visegrad Group (ie. the V4 – Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland). This group proves to be more and more of a determining challenger and activator of the EU governance in crisis. As we have often pointed out, Austria is the only one missing for the Visegrad Group to wear the robe of the late Austro-Hungarian empire. And as anticipated, Austria is officially starting to get closer to this group… and not just the far-right wing party (FPÖ) …Read more in the GEAB 118 / Oct 2017